Wednesday, May 08, 2013

All these sweaters make me feel creepy. Like an undead witch carcass is dangling just overhead, gasping and plotting.
That’s ridiculous. Your Gammy made you those sweaters. To keep you.
What?
To keep you warm, I meant.
Where is Gammy now? Is she still on that 5-Day Coastal Pacific Excursion on board the Norwegian Sun? She’s been away since before the last frost.
Gammy is in the insane asylum.
What?
Gammy is on that 5-Day Coastal Pacific Excursion on board the Norwegian Sun that you mentioned. She sent you a post card!
I haven’t seen this post card. Is it here?
It might be behind the television.
I looked behind the television.
It might be under the refrigerator.
I looked under the refrigerator.
Why did you look under the refrigerator?
I was hoping to find your cigarettes.
It might be with Sarah’s toys.
I looked with Sarah’s toys, and alls I found was a note from Gammy. It was etched into the blade of a nineteenth-century machete, and it said “fammi uscire da questa merda manicomio. Il cibo è pessimo e non hanno cavo.”
When is Chopped on? This isn’t my show.
Why do we have an antique machete with a note from Gammy on it?
That’s the post card I was talking about.
Some post card! You can harvest sugarcane with it!
Did you find my cigarettes?
I looked up her note on Google Translate and it says that she’s in an insane asylum. She wants us to get her out.
Why? You need more sweaters to complain about?
No, I like Gammy. We should spring her.
So, we took the antique machete and leapt out of our comfortable chairs and kicked the front door open and sank knee deep into the mud in the front yard and slogged through the mud for hours and finally reached the van with the handicap plates.
We started up the van and I knocked the machete against the roof racks on purpose.
We took off west on 5th St toward N Mayfield Ave, turned left onto the Interstate 215 S ramp, merged onto I-215 S, took the exit onto I-10 E toward Redlands/Indio, took the California St exit, turned right onto California St, turned left onto W Redlands Blvd and then into the driveway of the Inland Psychiatric Medical Group.
We opened the trunk and tied about a dozen bedsheets together and threw the string of bedsheets up into the air until one end caught on the sill of an open window about 6 stories up, which knocked over a potted begonia, and the sound of broken earthenware woke Gammy. She came to the window in her flowered shift.
“Fammi uscire da questa merda manicomio. Il cibo è pessimo e non hanno cavo.” she said calmly.
“What’s that, Gammy?”
“Fammi uscire da questa merda manicomio. Il cibo è pessimo e non hanno cavo.”
I looked at Ma. What is she saying?
I don’t know. Climb up and ask her again.
We don’t have a phone?
Just go! We’re missing my show!!
So I climbed up the bedsheets with the machete thrust into the tie of my velour bathrobe.
Gammy! I can’t climb any higher. What do you want?
“Fammi uscire da questa merda manicomio. Il cibo è pessimo e non hanno cavo.” she said, ask she lowered another creepy sweater to me.
I climbed back down, and we drove back to the house. I called and got Gammy a pizza and ordered her a Netflix subscription.
The undead witch carcass dangled overhead, gasping and plotting.

Why are the bees copping such a sarcastic attitude all of a sudden?
I blew a little smoke from my beloved pipe, hoshchey Kthe Deathless, on the hive. They’re all waving their bee butts around, like “Oh, smoke? Really? What a surprise.” And going back to their business, rebuilding damaged nests for pupae and collecting propolis.
Right away I could tell they were upset with me for something. I took a puff from Khoshchey and began to review my actions during the last few days, as the cloud of bees around me gave me the “oh no, everythings fine, why do you ask” look.
On Tuesday I brought a troika of collected “under-leaf buds of white birch, poplar and aspens, which allow bees to create in beehives the ideal protection - propolis.” They seemed quite pleased, as they waggled their pollinators and began to help me “vanish [my] anxieties concerning danger of «age illnesses», premature breakdown and withering of appearance.”
On Friday I had left my terrible assistant Foma unconscious in the mud near the beehive. He just smelt too terrible to keep him in, or near, my troika. I covered him with mud and layers of club moss in hopes that something in nature might biodegrade the horrible stench of his normal life. I hadn’t thought of the bees actually being affected by my leaving him nearby. After all, they don’t have noses at all, DO THEY?
If I had Google I might have figured out that “Honey bees (Apis mellifera) have 170 odorant receptors” and that they get supremely PO’d about leaving Foma so close to the hive. However I live in 1466, before Google or the journal Genome Research. I have to go with my gut. And I just wanted to retrieve my disgusting assistant Foma after I was done getting some honey from the bees, and toss his drunken form back onto the troika after the smell quieted down.
But no. All those odorant receptors TOTALLY RUINED the bees’ weekend. No bee girls would come over after the sock hop. None of the little bees out flagging down cars for a car wash (sorry troikas for a troika wash, I forgot I live in 1466) got anybody to stop, cause once they rolled down their birch-paper windows they got a whiff of Foma’s ungodly stench and stamped on their slate accelerator pedals out of Tver!!
So, that’s why the bees are totally dissing me.

Afanasy Nikitin

Afanasy Nikitin was the first Russian to explore India, which he wound up doing in about 1466.

In history books you will find very little about his dealings with the Shuisky sisters, or Alnus Rugosa, or Das Brick, because I made them up.

Ali Qushji and Perkin Warbeck and Jami the Persian Poet were real people, who sadly never really had anything to do with Russia or Afanasy Nikitin. The Kreml, while a real place, was probably not as fun as it appears herein.

So abandon all pretence of learning about historical Russia, ye who enter here.